Was verified in him: what need we say Of one who made success where others failed, A face all prose where Time's [benignant] haze Which marks the gain or loss of some time-fondled race. So Marius looked, methinks, and Cromwell so, Not in the purple born, to those they led Nothing ideal, a plain-people's man At the first glance, a more deliberate ken Finds type primeval, theirs in whose veins ran Our sword flashed joy; no skill of words could breed He slew our dragon, nor, so seemed it, knew He had done more than any simplest man might do. Yet did this man, war-tempered, stern as steel So Truth insists and will not be denied. We turn our eyes away, and so will Fame, As if in his last battle he had died Victor for us and spotless of all blame, Doer of hopeless tasks which praters shirk, One of those still plain men that do the world's rough work. ODE ON THE DEATH OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. Alfred, Lord Tennyson. BURY the Great Duke With an empire's lamentation, Let us bury the Great Duke To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation, Mourning when their leaders fall, Warriors carry the warrior's pall, And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall. Foremost captain of his time, O good gray head which all men knew, O voice from which their omens all men drew, O iron nerve to true occasion true, O fall'n at length that tower of strength Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew! Such was he whom we deplore. The long self-sacrifice of life is o'er. The great World-victor's victor will be seen no more. All is over and done: Render thanks to the Giver, England, for thy son. Let the bell be toll'd: And a deeper knell in the heart be knoll'd; And the sound of the sorrowing anthem roll'd And the volleying cannon thunder his loss; For many a time in many a clime His captain's-ear has heard them boom Bellowing victory, bellowing doom: When he with those deep voices wrought, Guarding realms and kings from shame; With those deep voices our dead captain taught The tyrant, and asserts his claim In that dread sound to the great name, Lo, the leader in these glorious wars Him who cares not to be great, But as he saves or serves the state. Not once or twice in our rough island-story, For the right, and learns to deaden Not once or twice in our fair island-story, Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled To which our God Himself is moon and sun. Such was he: his work is done. But while the races of mankind endure, Let his great example stand Colossal, seen of every land, And keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure : Till in all lands and thro' all human story The path of duty be the way to glory: And let the land whose hearths he saved from shame For many and many an age proclaim At civic revel and pomp and game, And when the long-illumined cities flame, Their ever-loyal iron leader's fame, With honor, honor, honor, honor to him, Eternal honor to his name. WITHIN a week after Hastings landed at Plymouth (1785), Burke gave notice in the House of Commons of a motion seriously affecting a gentleman lately returned from India.. Hastings, it is clear, was not sensible of the danger of his position. Indeed that sagacity, that judgment, that readiness in devising expedients, which had distinguished him in the East, seemed now to have forsaken him; not that his abilities were at all impaired; not that he was not still the same man who had triumphed over Francis and Nuncomar, who had made the Chief Justice and the Nabob Vizier his tools, who had deposed Cheyte Sing and repelled Hyder Ali. But an oak, as Mr. Grattan finely said, should not be transplanted at fifty. A man who, having left England when a boy, returns |